In the mid-20th century, there were some 75 sardine canneries operating along the Maine coast, so calling the region “sardine land” wouldn’t be hyperbole.
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport is diving into the history of that once robust sector of the marine economy in its spring exhibit, “Sardineland: Boom, Bust, and Aftermath.” To inform that exhibit, museum curator Cipperly Good and others hosted a “listening session” in Belfast on Jan. 6 to gather recollections of the industry from those who worked at sardine packing plants. Belfast had a sardine packing plant operating through most of the 20th century.
In introducing the session, Good noted that sardine plants operated from Eastport to Portland.
Among those attending was Anne Shure, who remembered working during summers at the Stinson sardine plant in town from 1970 through 1972.
“It made me want to go to college,” she said of her summer jobs there. While at the plant, she had to be at work by 7 a.m. Workers would learn if fish had been brought in for processing by listening to the local radio station, she said.
I’d have to sleep on my hands, because they would keep going,” making packing movements.
David Black, a local lobsterman, was a customer at the cannery. “I relied on them as a source of lobster bait,” he said of the Stinson plant.
“They used to blow the whistle when they had fish,” he said, following up on Shure’s recollection of the radio station reports. The whistle, he believes, had come from the former steamship Belfast. Black also remembered a bus picking up workers in the 1960s.
With heavy harvesting, the nature of the catch changed, several noted, so that the fish was being delivered by truck rather than boat, and the size of the catch changed, with larger fish becoming more common. These herring “steaks” wouldn’t fit as easily in cans.
Frank Joseph, who was born and raised in Belfast, said his mother Elaine worked at the Stinson plant from 1976 through it closure in the early 2000s.
“I worked there for two summers in the ‘90s as a ‘floater,’” Joseph said. “The canneries closed, just as the poultry plants closed, and the shoe factories. They sort of ended at the same time,” he said. “The writing was on the wall.”
While working at Bank of America in Belfast, Joseph said a colleague there had once worked at the cannery, representing the transition of the region’s economic character from factory to information. “She was one of a few,” he said.
Joseph said his mother had developed injuries from the work.
David Thanhauser, a family physician in Belfast since 1971, said he frequently saw patients suffering with wrist and hand injuries, the result of working the city’s sardine and poultry plants. He also remembers when the processing plants folded.
“I got a lot of requests to send medical records out of town,” as former workers moved away.
Denise Talbot remembered being unhappy with her job and visiting the sardine plant to consider a position there.
“When I saw the women with their hands in the ice buckets, I thought my job was pretty good,” she said with a laugh.
Shure said the workers were paid a cent for each can they packed.
“You had to pack fast enough to meet the minimum wage,” which at the time was $1.80. The workers used scissors to cut off the herring’s heads and tails.
“I had to put first aid tape on my fingers because the scissors were sharp,” she said.
Shure overslept and arrived late for her first day on the job, and she remembered, “Everyone else on the line was looking at me” as she walked in. Eventually, she could pack 300 cans in an hour, equaling $3 an hour in wages.
That speed came with a cost, though.
“I got carpal tunnel,” Shure said. “I’d have to sleep on my hands, because they would keep going,” making packing movements.
The cannery workforce swelled in summer, Shure remembered, as some of her peers took jobs there to make money for back-to-school clothes.
Black, the lobsterman, said the herring catch declined because “the boats got bigger,” and in the 1970s, spotter airplanes were used to find the schools.
The public’s tastes also changed. In the 1950s, blue collar workers would bring a can of sardines to work in their lunchbox, but that faded away.
Moderating the session was Tora Johnson, a former professor at the University of Maine at Machias and currently director of the Sustainable Prosperity Initiative at Washington County’s Sunrise Economic Council.
Johnson said her parents and her husband’s parents both worked in seafood processing and were able to send them to college on their wages. “You couldn’t do that today,” she said.
More information sought
The Penobscot Marine Museum’s “Sardineland” exhibit opens Memorial Day Weekend and runs through Oct. 26.
The museum is still seeking information from former workers at plants along the coast, who can send answers to questions such as: How and when did you know the cannery was closing? How did it affect your family and finances? What jobs filled the gap after the cannery closed? How has your community changed since the closing? How has your working waterfront infrastructure changed since the canneries ceased operations? How do you see your community evolving in the aftermath?
Responses can be sent to cgood@pmm-maine.org or Penobscot Marine Museum, Curator, PO Box 498, Searsport, ME 04974.
